Igbo Landing: The Flying Africans
In May 1803, a group of 75 Igbo people from what is now Nigeria were captured and transported to Georgia. After surviving the Middle Passage, they were loaded onto a small vessel at Savannah and shipped to St. Simons Island to be sold at the slave market. Rather than submit to a life of bondage, the Igbo captives—led by their high-ranking warriors among them—rose up against their captors, took control of the ship, and forced it aground at Dunbar Creek. There, in a coordinated act of mass resistance, they walked deliberately into the water, singing in their native Igbo language, drowning themse